Finnish Trends in Housing Services

In Finnish context the housing and related services are well established industries where both the tenants and the service providers are accustomed to certain ways of behaving and being part of the service processes. There are, however, weak signals suggesting that the housing related services are going to change a lo t in the near future. In urban development it is important to know what are the major changes that are likely to appear. This paper outlines some of these changes in Finnish context. The most potential changes are first outlined with 2 workshops with the Finnish academic experts on the issue. The material from the workshops is augmented with a small-scale survey. The 78 respondents in the survey were professionals in housing services. In this way it was possible to combine both academic and practical views. The results suggest that the building information modeling (BIM) will affect the future housing markets a lot. Also the ways the services are provided are changing. One possible change could be appearance of a new actor in the service business - namely a service mediator - a mediator who seek for optimized services for customers. Also new services might be essential in order to reach the societal goals of sustainability. The practitioners have many times so much to do that they do not have time to stop to think about the future. This paper allows the practitioner to have a short glimpse to the possible future directions of their businesses. From academic perspective this article adds understanding of housing and input into researching the service design in the field of housing services.